


Transport Cafe

by fajrdrako



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:11:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fajrdrako/pseuds/fajrdrako
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Going north changes perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transport Cafe

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in [NIght Music in B & D](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Night_Music_in_B_and_D) by Keynote Press, May 1998.

 

**_Friday, November 25_ **

Doyle woke with a start when Bodie slammed on the brakes.

It was dark, and he couldn't see his partner's bent profile. They had swerved and come to a stop on the roadside, pelting rain making it impossible to see anything but shapes within the car, and nothing outside it.

"Where the hell are we?" asked Doyle. It didn't look like London. Looked like nowhere. Dark shapes in the distance were probably trees, but even if it hadn't been dark, the rain made it impossible to see anything.

Bodie's answer was a string of curses.

Doyle patiently waited till he had finished and then inquired, "Why'd we stop, then?"

"Because I bloody fell asleep at the fucking wheel, that's why!"

"Scared you, did it?" asked Doyle perceptively.

"I dunno how you want to shove off your mortal coil, mate, but a late night on some godforsaken bit of Queen's highway isn't y notion of the way to go."

Doyle yawned. "Lucky there's no traffic."

Lucky there's no cliff. Lucky there's no wall. Lucky there's no --" Bodie stopped abruptly.

"What time is it?"

"Dunno. Don't give a flying --"

"You're upset," said Doyle. "Nerves."

"Oh, right, Sherlock, I practically crash-land at the pearly gates and all you can say is, _nerves_?"

"I could take the wheel for a bit. You must be tired." He peered at his watch with his pocket lighter. "It's going on for eleven. How long've we been up?"

"I'm no more fucking tired than you are."

"No, but you let me have a bit of a doze there. I can drive a bit."

Bodie didn't answer. He simply put the car in gear, managed a squealing U-turn and sped off the way they had come.

"Hey! This isn't the way home," said Doyle.

"No. I saw a lace back there. Transport cafe, lay-by, some sort of civilisation. They'll have coffee. Or something. I need caffeine."

"That'll help," said Doyle.

"Hell, I need amphetamines. But they won't have any."

"Bad for you," commented the ex-drug-squad hotshot.

"Yeah, well, so's death on the highway. More people die in road accidents than…"

"Tan what?"

"Angels dance on the head of a pin. I dunno. More than something, I'm sure."

"More than Macklin kills in his training sessions?" 

"I wouldn't go that far, said Bodie. "Seems unlikely. Still. Treacherous, these turns."

"You're cheering me up," speculated Doyle.

"Like hell I am!"

"There's a light," said Doyle.

Bodie had almost missed it. It was a light. It was the streetlamp hanging without lustre in front of a lit building with no claim to pretension whatsoever.

Doyle squinted suspiciously through the wet glass of the window, then opened the car door. "You think the health inspector's been around here lately?" he asked.

"Shouldn't think so," said Bodie, getting out of the car. He was instantly soaked. "Rather die from poisoning than from falling asleep on the road. Think how depressing it would be in the obit. _Death by somnolence -- CI5 agent sleeps himself to death._ Cowley would frown"

"Cowley would kill you," said Doyle. He ran straight into the place, hoping to minimize the soaking.

The attempt was futile; he was sopping from head to toe, his curls corkscrewing by the time he was through the door. Bodie stood behind him, tired, wet and smoldering, and they looked at the establishment's patrons, who looked back at them. The Beatles sang "The Long and Winding Road" tinnily from a dusty speaker. The old woman at the counter was snoring.

Bodie had called the place "some sort of civilisation", but he saw now that he had been wrong. Civilisation had bypassed this crook in the road; in a hierarchy of roadside establishments, this was a common hovel. As shelters from the rain go, it might have been better to be wet.

"Coffee," said Bodie laconically to the person who seemed to be working there. The person disappeared through a swinging door, presumably, a kitchen. Bodie sat in a booth. Doyle followed and sat opposite him.

Eyes followed them.

It might have been a biker hangout, thought Doyle, except there were no bikes out front. The few shapes visible in the rain might have been trucks. He'd seen a few slimy types in his days with the Met and with CI4, but not often all in one room like this. They weren't all men, but the creatures that weren't men were more accurately tarts and crones than women. A white-haired female snored gently at the end counter, her head cradled in her arms. A younger woman, hair a garish red, smiled hopefully at both the agents. A teenager with green hair seemed awestricken, her mouth open in an O of wonder as she gaped at them.

A waitress appeared. "Coffee," she said in a flat, hard voice, putting two mugs unceremoniously on the table.

"Thanks, luv," said Bodie and offered what might in other circumstances have been a smile of devastating charm. Tonight it came out as hard, cold, dangerous.

Doyle realised he was staring at Bodie and looked away.

Bodie pushed a cup towards him. There was sugar on the table and Bodie poured a generous quantity into his coffee. "kills the germs, he explained, stirring with his finger. Doyle shrugged, and drank his straight. He didn't trust the milk. The drink was hot, without much flavour.

"Got any food?" Bodie asked the waitress, who was hovering.

"Only the special."

"Which is?"

"Fry up."

"I'll have it."

The woman disappeared.

"Sure that's wise?" asked Doyle.

"Calories mean energy. It'll keep me awake.

Doyle nodded, and took another sip, wondering how anything black could be so tasteless. Bun then everything was black, wash't it? The scowls on the people here. The dirt and the shadows in the corners. The night outside. Bodie's mood.

He thought for a moment about that, and the possible reasons for it. What had he been thinking about while Doyle slept, and the miles passed? The op? Or the other things that had happened, the things they had done together.

Whatever Bodie was silently thinking, his fingers tightened on the contours of his mug. Doyle stared for a moment at those fingers. Those fingers which were strong and mobile and warm. Those fingers which had --

No. Don't think about that.

He dropped his eyes from Bodie's hands and wished the veil of fatigue would lift. The rain on the roof was monotonous and steady. Beside him, he could feel a trickle of dampness from the window or the wall, or perhaps it was from the leaking roof. He tried to move away from it, feeling clammy.

"Restless? inquired Bodie?

"Yeah."

"It was a bad case."

"Yeah."

 

**_Monday, November 21_ **

They might never know who Lily was, and they never would know what message they might have given her. They looked at each other, ankle-deep in the mud of the culver, and each knew the other thought the same thing, that the dead man wanted them to tell Lily he loved her, as if this were some tearful drama that housewives watched on afternoon television.

"He was a killer," said Doyle flatly, looking down at the body, using his r/t to notify the police. The dead man's skin seemed greenish in the glare of the street-lamp.

"Yeah," said Bodie. "His own fault he was in a gang war."

"Chose his fate, didn't he? Could have been a schoolteacher or an artist."

"That's crap," said Bodie. "You have to have some intelligence to be a teacher, and some talent to be an artist. He was just a bastard with a gun."

"And Lily?"

"Some woman stupid enough to get mixed up with a bastard with a gun."

True enough. Bud Doyle knew Bodie was being harsh because he didn't like death, especially when the death come from a shot through the head. His killers had shot him in the knee so he couldn't run before they had killed him by shooting him in the back. 

"Think they'll come back?" asked Doyle, looking to the end of the culvert. But it was too dark to see in the distance, the off-color light form the street-lamp no use at all.

"Naw," said Bodie. "They don't need to. They don't know who we are. They aren't out to kill coppers or bystanders. Just each other."

"Hell of a business," said Doyle.

"So's ours," said Bodie.

 

**_Tuesday, November 22_ **

 

Doyle thought of that comment the next day. It was colder, raining again, and the curried lentils he'd had for supper had given him indigestion. They were watching the house they suspected the Chief lived in, but no one was home and no one had been home for two days. Still, they had nowhere else to go, except the pubs, where they didn't want to attract too much notice, and they'd already asked enough questions to raise suspicions. Sitting in the car they were out of the rain and if not comfortably war, at least not chilled to the bone.

"Let's check the club again," said Bodie suddenly.

"All right," said Doyle equably. It would be interesting to be anywhere but here, and they might as well see whether Fordham had gone to the club he owned. He didn't seem to spend much time there -- and no wonder. The girls were tarty and the drinks were watered. On the other hand, it was one of the few leads they had, and if the owner wasn't there some of his hirelings probably were. Trina, the go-between. Al, Puxy , and Ricky, the hired help. Interminable interviews with uninformed informants had given them that much.

Still, as they stepped over the threshold, there was a sense of coming in from the cold. They sat at an overly small table and ordered overpriced drinks -- Cheap at one-fiftieth the price," quipped Bodie. The strippers' dance music wound around them like a cat at their ankles, luring them in. Bodie sat back and watched the stage with appreciation. Doyle watched Bodie, then looked away, glancing with false casualness over the room. The music made him want to sway.

"I like that bit with the handcuffs," said Bodie. Doyle grunted without looking at the girl, or the handcuffs. He'd seen such acts before. He scanned the audience instead.

The drug dealers were keeping themselves out of sight, having probably tagged Bodie and Doyle as law already and making that a reason to stay clear. The second dance act was better than the first. A man with a mustached came on the stage after the girls went off, and said, "The best of the best -- I present you, Trina!"

It was the woman they were after. Bodie's mumbled curse was drowned out by the crash of recorded cymbals as Trina came on stage. She was the villain's girl. They watched as she began her dance, flashing bits of skin as she played with buttons of her sequined costume. Doyle said, "Out back."

Bodie nodded and they went briskly to the backstage door. For the moment it wasn't raining. Bodie picked the lock while Bodie gave cover, and they went inside.

Girls in various stages of undress ignored them. A scrawny young man was talking to a rather overdeveloped dancer who looked older in the lit room than she had seemed on stage, she was shouting at him. 

Bodie and Doyle paused, casing the room with their yes as they stood to either side of the door. Trina wasn't there. Bodie said, in an undertone. "That's her music. She's still on."

They moved closer to the door through which she would come. 

Trina came backstage, applause behind her. The spotlight had not flattered her. She was uncommonly pretty, in a Louise Brooks sort of way, as tall as Bodie, with a schoolgirl innocence to her look that made Doyle wonder how old she actually might be. Doyle stepped beside her. "Trina?"

"I'm busy tonight," she snapped, her cold ton and common accent at odds with her looks. She pulled on nylon panties and a white jacket, stepping into her stiletto-healed shoes. Then she moved past Doyle, but Bodie was in the way.

"Hello, Trina _Friday, November 25_

 

In the dark transport cafe, the music of Tom Jones rasped and crooned, but it didn't matter: the load conversation at the counter drowned out the antique recording with snatches of "He didn't!" and "Go on, then," and "Tell that to yer grandmother."

Doyle watched Bodie sip his coffee, his mind silently on his own thoughts. A broody bastard, Bodie was. Never said anything he didn't feel like saying.

Hell of a case.

Sims had died, and one of the coppers they'd been working with, Anderson. Sheffield was a decent city, most of the time, but gang war did nothing to improve the ambience and Doyle thought he would now always associated Sheffield with the smell of blood and gunpowder.

The fry up arrived. The eggs were a suspicious shade of orange, brown at the edges against the thick white dish. Doyle wondered how Bodie could have an appetite.

One of the men in torn denim said something to them. Doyle didn't catch it, but he saw Bodie's fingers tighten on the fork as he glanced up, murder in his eyes, and there was a ripple of laughter through the crowd.

"Leave it," said Doyle, in a low voice.

Bodie turned his black look on Doyle. "Back in a sec," he said, and got up, heading purposeful towards the gents.

Bodie was on his way back when the green-haired girl smiled at him.

Since Doyle was watching Bodie and the girl rather than her young male companion, he didn't see exactly what happened. It appeared Bodie stumbled over the youth's foot, but he didn't fall. Instead, in a graceful dive-and-twirl motion that was a delight to watch, he took the kid by the throat and threw him onto his back across the cracked Formica counter.

"Hey!" said the kid, his feet waving in the air over the barstool.

"Watch yourself," said Bodie softly. "Next time, someone might get hurt."

He let go of the boy, and turned his back on him.

Five men stood up, facing Bodie, spoiling for a fight.

Doyle closed his eyes briefly, and shook his head. He wanted to laugh. It was just too bloody perfect. Bodie was in a bad mood already, what'd these idiots want, blood frenzy? It was like babies wailing for attention. Didn't know what they were asking for, did they?

"Gentlemen!" said the proprietor. "Enough. Please!"

"Keep out o' it, Kenner," said the man in the red plaid shirt.

"Five against one," said Kenner. "The police won't like it if you hurt 'im."

Doyle rolled his eyes.

"hardly seems fair," mused Bodie. "Odds like that. Think I should only use one hand?" The old woman at the end of the counter wok up, raised her head, groaned, and went to sleep again.

A burly man rushed him. The boy on the counter tried to hit him per the head with a bottle. There was a confusion of voices, a shuffling of feet, a scream as someone with a Geordie accent got the bottle across his shoulder. 

Doyle took a sip of his coffee. As it cooled, it tasted worse than ever.

Someone with a knife took a stab at Bodie and Doyle's hand flashed out, getting the man by the wrist, overbalancing him backwards. The knife fell onto the table and Doyle picked it up, put it into his boot. "Confiscating this," he said. "He's an unarmed man, y'know." It was technically untrue -- Bodie had a gun in his holster and at least one knife hidden, but since he wasn't likely to use either weapon, it was fair to say he was unarmed in principle.

The fight seemed to be over. One man was on the floor. Another, winded, lay across one of the benches. The boy was standing sullenly on the other side of the room, nursing his arm, and someone was hiding behind the counter with Kenner. The others had disappeared. Bodie sat down again across the table from Doyle. "Bloody amateurs," he muttered.

The green-haired girl was staring at him as if at god incarnate. He gave her a quick smile, then returned to glaring into his mug.

"You going to fuck her?" asked Doyle, with an element of malice.

"You think I should?"

"Might relieve your emptier."

"The fight did that."

"Wasn't a fight. Was the Massacre of the Innocents. Isn't she your trophy?"

"Could be. Lookin' out for me, are you?"

Doyle shrugged. "It's an alternative."

He didn't say to what. Bodie have him an enigmatic look, and took a forkful of dry eggs and charred sausage.

Doyle thought of that hot dick and how it had felt in his hand that time, and looked down at his fingers wrapped around his mug. Hell, that was three days ago. And two days ago …

 

_**Wednesday, November 23** _

 

Two days ago it hadn't been raining. It had been cold, and misty, with a damp wind that promised rain later on. There'd been a shoot-out at The Brown Jug, and Bodie'd shot an Irishman in the car park, before the man could shoot Doyle. Doyle had seen the barrel of the gun as it aimed at him, knew he didn't have time to shoot before he was shot, had looked straight at his own death for the thousandth time and had felt it as frightening as the first time he had faced it.

Then the man had fallen dead to Bodie's bullet, and there had been business to take care of before Doyle could get the shakes over it. Bodie didn't shake. He never suffered from nerves after he killed -- or if he did, he let no one see it. Questioning the courier; now, there was a rotten piece of work, that man with a mouth like a latrine and a greedy mind. When Doyle hit him for answers, Bodie stopped him.

Good top, bad cop, it always worked, one way or another. The upshot was they found out where the money'd gone, but by the time they got there, everyone had cleared out down to the last cigarette butt and muddy boot-print. They got fingerprints, and eager cooperation from the lads at the nick, and they tracked down Lockum and Hare in a stolen car three hours later, with evidence enough to book them.

It was later, in the car, with Bodie being closed-mouthed and snappish at the wheel, that Doyle had come to the end of his temper and patience and had hit the dashboard hard.

Bodie glanced at him. "Ray? You doing all right?" He pulled to a stop in the alley behind the Brown Jug.

"No!" said Doyle. He got out of the car, feeling stifled, slamming the door behind him. He went to the brick wall and leaned against it, feeling the rough wetness of the stone against his hands. Behind hi, he heard the opening and shutting of Bodie's door. He could feel the shakes rising in him, like the tide. Too many guns. Too many bastards. Too little accomplished.

He punched his fist against the stone, and then a second time.

Bodie's hand closed over his fist, stopping him from behind. "Ray! You'll hurt yourself."

Doyle turned around, leaning his back against the wall, breathing heavily. "I'm just frustrated," he said. "Nerves on edge. Sorry."

"Other ways of dealing with it," said Bodie. Doyle grunted in derision. "What? Winning? Hasn't happened, has it? Our men drop like flies and theirs get aways scot-free --"

Didn't mean that," said Bodie. He had a funny look on his face, half sympathetic, half eager.

"What, then? Drugs? Women? Drink?"

"Not exactly." Bodie moved a little closer, and suddenly Doyle's mind switched tracks and froze.

He remembered suddenly and vividly that he'd wanked his partner and lived to recall it. He hadn't forgotten. Not that it had slipped his mind. He'd pushed it to the back of his consciousness, where it had lingered on the edge of his thoughts. Bodie's physical presence was something he was always ware of, but now it was more distracting than it had been. Bodie, hot in his hand, shuddering in climax under his fingers -- no, he had not forgotten.

This same Bodie was now standing closer against him in a dark alley behind the Brown Jug at midnight in Sheffield, the wind against his back. "let me do you," said Bodie. His eyes were dark and shadowed, even given the limited light from someone's curtained window and the street lamp in the distance.

"How?" said Doyle. HIs nerves were still going wild, but in a different way. He remembered Bodie once saying to him, "Fear does it to me every time. After I'm almost killed, I always want to get laid." And Doyle'd had some joke -- something he couldn't remember now, about sex being Bodie's cure for anything.

Maybe it was.

"How d'you want it?" asked Bodie. He was close enough now that Doyle could feel the heat of his chest, though their bodies were not quite touching. The brick was cold at his back, and Bodie's warmth was like a haven in front of him. He made his hands into fists against at his sides, feeling the sting where he'd broken the skin on the stone.

Feeling angry and contrary, he said, "haven't said I want it, have I?" He had started shaking again. Couldn't think why.

"But you do, don't you?" asked Bodie. "Don't you?" He dropped his head, and Doyle could see nothing of his eyes but those long lashes against his cheek. He leaned his left hand on the stone beside Doyle's head and his right hand fumbled with Doyle's belt and fly. He pressure against his sensitive cock nearly made Doyle cry out loud -- when had he become hard? And how? Bodie's hand touched him in the same way that he had touched Bodie the day before, but Bodie looked up suddenly, so they were looking directly into each other's eyes, faces inches apart. Bodie said, "Let me suck you? Can I?"

Don't care," said Doyle harshly, fighting with tremours which darted through him with Bodie's words.

Bodie took that as invitation enough. He dropped to his knees and fastened his mouth around Doyle's hard erection, and Doyle's hands touched the stone behind him as his knees went weak. He thrust into Bodie's mouth and felt Bodie's hands reaching around him, holding his arse, and the pleasure surged through him in every extremity. He tried to say Bodie's name, but there was no sound but a groan. Bodie's mouth consumed him, taking him in almost all the way. It was impossible and it was glorious. He could feel the rough-texture dexterity of his tongue and the firm pressure of his lips and the sensations that continued to build and grow until he thought he couldn't bear it. But he could.

Bodie sucked and licked and teased, knowing just when to ease off and when to add pressure. Doyle, who until yesterday had thought himself uncommonly experienced in sexual matters, thought nothing had ever felt so good, or ever could.

And the sight. He looked down at Bodie's bent head, mouth stretched around his cock, dark hair against fair skin, shadowed by the distant lamplight, the face like classic alabaster. The sight! Oh the sight.

He shot into Bodie's mouth with a strangled cry, and Bodie took it, murmuring and nuzzling him and sucking him dry till at last he fell back, and Bodie, smiling, rose. "Feel better?" he asked, and a finger touched Doyle's cheek, gently.

Doyle nodded, his eyes huge. He couldn't speak. Couldn't think. He could only stand, tingling.

They didn't talk about it. Not then, not later. He didn't even have his voice or his wits back when the r/t had buzzed and sent them after Fordham again. After that had been the fight with Fordham's bodyguards, the negotiations in the dark and smoke-filled room, the accusations and denials.

By dawn, they'd fallen into bed at their hotel, separate single beds. Doyle was too tired to talk and too worn out to remember why he wanted to.

 

_**Thursday, November 24** _

 

They had awakened to a rainy afternoon, and more work. Bodie was tense and moody, Doyle not much less so. Today, Doyle didn't succeed in putting what they had done to the back of his mind. It stayed in the forefront of his consciousness, interfering with his work and his concentration, making him uncommonly aware of his cock and its sometimes-inconvenient desires.

The first time, in the car, he had followed a momentary impulse. Just -- doing a favour for a friend, that was all. An amusingly wicked favour, pulling him off on the job, an act that was simultaneously kind and warm as well as illegal, immoral and outrageously titillating. Especially since it was bodie, his closest friend, his partner whom he trusted with his life and more, and the most straight and masculine man he had ever known.

This same man had just given him a blow job of such exquisite perfection that he couldn't get it out of his head or his system.

Bodie.

He felt disoriented, at the same time pleasurably enlightened and mildly betrayed. He wanted to say, _Why didn't you tell me you could do that? That you enjoyed that? That you were like that?_

He wanted to say, _Do it again._. And again, and again.

Looking at Bodie's dark profile, intent on the op or on his own thoughts, he couldn't say anything at all.

When this job was over he'd say it. He'd say all those things. He'd make Bodie explain, and find out what he wanted.

Doyle knew what he wanted. He wanted Bodie to do it over and over again.

 

Then there was a car chase that ended in a smash-up, but no one was hurt except a stop sign, and Fordham was behind bars where, with any luck, the law could keep him this time. There were mopping-up operations, and they went back to the hotel to get their bags. 

They hadn't brought much. As Bodie dropped a few items in his carry-all (razor, towel, underwear both clean and dirty) Doyle watched Bodie pretend not to be watched. Then Bodie glanced up and met his eyes and Doyle said, "Well?"

"Well, what?" Not a promising beginning.

"Want to do it again?"

"Do what?"

"What we did. Anything."

Bodie stared at him for a long, penetrating moment. His nostrils flared slightly, and Doyle's arousal surged in response. It was mid-afternoon, it was late November, and he was alone in a hotel room with a man he wanted more than he'd ever wanted anyone. On any terms.

But it seemed arousal wasn't foremost in Bodie's mind. He said harshly, "What kind of whore are you?"

"Any kind you want," said Doyle, trying to make it light. "Try me. I have a few skills. Licensed to thrill, that's me."

Bodie didn't smile. It was hard to interpret his expression, except as anger, or perhaps disgust.

"Thought you liked it," said Doyle.

"Suppose I did," said Bodie. "What are you after, Doyle?"

Doyle opened his mouth, and shut it again, wondering what the question meant.

The phone rang.

It was Bodie who reached for it, his face still stony. "Bodie," he snapped, and then listened. Doyle could tell from his expression it was Cowley. He said "Yes, sir" twice, and then, "We're on it."

Then he said to Doyle, "Fordham's driver has the drugs, and the weapons, and he's left the city in a black Range Rover.

"We're on it," said Doyle, grabbing his coat.

***

It was no better than before. By the time they caught up with the driver, Robertson, he had four companions and all were armed. Doyle was cut in the leg when he came up on them from behind in the house where they went to roost, but the distraction was enough that Bodie was able to break in the front door and in the end only one man was killed, his blood staining Doyle's boots as he fell on him.

The job still wasn't over, the interminable op from hell. Interrogation of Robertson and the girl, whose name was Pauline Pollinger, led them to a contact whom they could catch with another shipment if they timed it right. So Bodie passed himself off as a buyer of arms, large sums of money and no questions asked, and he was wired and unarmed. It was dangerous, but it was the way to the big payoff.

 

They met late that night in the car park under the shopping mall. It was midnight, and no one was about. Bodie was driving an old-model Jaguar. It suited him so well that Doyle was charmed. "Should've known you'd go for a flash car in your life of crime," he said.

"Works, doesn't it?" said Bodie shortly. "Listen, Doyle, we have to have this timed just right. If you and the coppers miss your cue =="

"You're flotsam in the river and I'm another CI5 widow," said Doyle. "I know. Trust me, Bodie."

Bodie set his jaw. There was a glimmer of humour. "I do trust you," he said. "Why else are we here?" He handed Doyle the information he had jotted down: names, places, times, sources. "Pass it on. If this doesn't work --"

"It'll work," said Doyle.

They were staring at each other, each thinking of something other than the job.

"How're you doing?" asked Doyle.

"Fine."

"What do you want?"

It was an honest question and it got an honest answer. "I want to fuck you."

Amused and pleased, Doyle quirked an eyebrow. "Whenever you like." He felt a sudden immense cheer. He wanted to sing. He wanted to hug Bodie.

Bodie was as grim as ever Doyle had seen him. "Now," said Bodie. "Here."

Suddenly Doyle's heart was hammering very hard.

Now. Here. A cold, damp, underground car park that was empty of people, holding only a half dozen cars. Of course, the owners of those cars might appear at any moment. The place was brightly lit. The lights were harsh and the concrete was hard and the time was as wrong as it could be. But Bodie wanted him and Bodie was going into the worst sort of danger, the danger of uncertainty, and he had made the offer, and in any case he would do anything Bodie asked of him, anything at all, ignoring the fact that he wanted it as much as Bodie did, against all reason.

So even though he didn't want it, not here, not now, not like this, he gave Bodie the kind of bright, challenging look that he gave Macklin before an assault, and he stopped forward without breaking gaze or stride, dropping his jeans.

Bodie's eyes glittered. He pushed Doyle against the car, his chest against the boot, running his hands over Doyle's bare arse. Between the cold of the metal of the car and the cold air of the car park, Bodie's large, hot hands trailed a thrilling burning sensation where they touched his back and hips and cheeks.

Doyle had seen Bodie in a mood like this, a time or two. He knew from his own experience how it hit sometimes, especially when facing danger, a lust deep and desperate. He expected a brutal assault and was prepared to welcome it, but instead Bodie's fingers touched him gently, probing his anus with some kind of oil or lotion, and he felt a sudden surge of arousal of his won. Bodie wasn't just acting on gut-wrenching fantasy and whim. Bodie had mad preparations.

He squirmed against the fingers, whimpering a little, wanting what was coming more than he had ever imagined. "Come on, Bodie," he said, through gritted teeth.

So Bodie came on, came into him, hesitating a little at the first, then thrusting inside him with swift, sure strokes, and Doyle cried out with the magnificence of it, because he'd never felt anyone or anything like this inside him, and his voice echoed on concrete walls and ceiling and floor, along with the eery ebb and flow of Bodie's loud breathing against his ear. "Bodie!" he said, out loud, and Bodie's hands gripped his shoulders and he felt the press of Bodie's thighs against the back of his legs. He pressed back against Bodie with a grunt and felt Bodie's climax sweep and grow and explode, and he was able to contain it, gripping with his muscles and his hands pressed tight against the red metal of the fenders, and his breath fogging the shiny paint while it overtook him, too.

Bodie did not pull out at first. He lay against him, his body covering Doyle so it was hard to breathe, but Doyle liked it, being caught between Bodie's heavy warmth and the impersonal cold scarlet Jag. Then Bodie moved off him carefully, and said "Doyle?"

"Yeah?"

Gentle hands pulled his jeans up over his arse and hips, so he was outwardly decent again, despite the feelings running through him and the stickiness between denim and skin. Gentle hands touched his back. "See you later, hero," said Bodie lightly, and turned away. Doyle stood leaning against he car without looking back.

 

_**Friday, November 25** _

Bodie survived. Doyle made two of the arrests himself, with a certain grim satisfaction, though one of the fools tried to fight and tried to run for it. With Bodie's evidence and the goods on the premises, there was no doubt about the success of the op.

Cowley even had a word or two of praise. "Well done, boys," he said. "Come back tonight, I want to show you the latest developments in the Roper case."

"We still have paperwork to her here," said Doyle.

"Come as soon as it's done." Cowley slammed down the phone in his usual brisk manner.

"Shit," said Doyle. "It'll be midnight by the time we're back in London."

"You heard him," said Bodie. Doyle always wondered how it was that Bodie, who was a law unto himself, acted as if Cowley's slightest command was the word of God from the mountaintop. Military training, perhaps.

As usual, it all took longer than they'd hoped. Explanations and resorts and files to correct and initial. Some back-slapping and a pint for good luck with the lads at the station. Then, back on the road. Doyle, who hadn't slept the night before, was so knackered he was asleep by the time he hit the passenger seat. Bodie seemed to be fine, till he fell asleep at the wheel and stopped for some revivifying coffee.

And still, the subject they had not discussed lay between them.

***

Bodie's coffee was growing cold. The steam coming from it had disappeared, and a white scum was floating on top. He ate the eggs slowly and methodically, as if distracted and hardly tasting the meal. Which was probably just as well. Perhaps he was just too tired to be enthusiastic about food.

The old woman was still asleep at the end of the bar. The blond punk took the green-haired girl outside; the last they saw of her was a glance over her shoulder at Bodie and Doyle. Doyle met her eye and she looked away. The door swung shut behind her.

Everyone else had gone. A football game plated silently on a television set at the end of the bar, where it had been playing, ignored, all evening. The Beatles sang about a long and winding road.

Doyle said, "What's wrong?"

"Eh?"

"Trappist monks would trip over your silence, sunshine."

"Maybe I've nothing to say."

"Or?"

Bodie glowered at him. His mouth tweaking in a self-deprecating smile that disappeared as fast as it arrived. "You always could read my mind, couldn't you?"

"Naw. If I could, I wouldn't have to ask."

Bodie shrugged.

"What we did," said Doyle. "Does it bother you?"

"Doesn't matter if it did or it didn't," said Bodie. "Don't think we'd get away with in in London, would we?"

Doyle frowned. "I don't follow."

"Fucking in public, mate, people get arrested for that."

"in Sheffield too, I imagine," said Doyle. "We were lucky. The thing is, in London, we could do it at home."

He had meant it to be a friendly invitation. He did not understand the fury that came over Bodie's face, the flat of his hand on the tabletop a shock that made the plate jump. "No!"

Doyle went white, then red. He fought for his own temper. He finally said in a tight voice, "If you don't fancy me, then, don't beat about the bush. Tell me outright. Tell me you didn't like it."

"You manipulative little bastard," said Bodie. "Think you own me, do you? Think you can crook a finger and I"ll come running, is that it?"

"You wanted it," said Doyle, breathing a little more quickly than he wanted to. "You arrogant sod. You wanted it."

"You made me want it. You found my weakness, and you used me," said Bodie.

"Takes two to tango, friend."

Bodie opened his mouth for a harsh retort, but before he could speak the doors opened with the dingle of a bell, and two lorry drivers walked in. They sat at the bar and the proprietor came out. There was some hearty talk, of which Doyle heard the nature but not the substance. He was staring at Bodie, trying to keep his temper, trying to guess what was eating him.

"You liked it," said Doyle. He was trying to think what Bodie must be thinking. As far as he knew, Bodie hadn't had much sexual experience with men, though he had no prejudices against the idea. Had he grown a few in the past few days?

"Right. And King Charles liked the executioner's block, did he?"

Doyle frowned, puzzling over it. "You saying I forced you?"

"That's one way of putting it," said Bodie.

One of the men laughed loudly at a joke the proprietor had told.

"So why'd you let me?"

Bodie made an angry, impatient gesture, and shook his head. He's stopped eating the eggs and sausages, which were congealing in the dish.

Doyle answered his own question. "Because you liked it. It was only afterwards, thinking about it, that you had second thoughts. Then why did you --"

"Couldn't stop thinking about it, could I?" He lowered his voice to an almost inaudible angry whisper. "Couldn't stop thinking what you'd done and how you'd done it. D'you know how good you are? Fingers like a piano player, strong and flexible, and you know just where to put them. You know just were to touch, and how. Couldn't forget. And you looked at me with that come-and-get-me stare, and flexed your hips just so -- drove me made with it, didn't you? You knew just what you were doing."

"No," whispered Doyle, avidly.

"Yes, you did. You know me better'n I know myself, don't you? So you let me do it to you in the alley, let me have you in the car park, and I gave you everything you could want didn't I? And I would have done more. What I don't understand is what you want from me."

There was a sudden silence. The men at the bar did not seem to be listening to them, but it was impossible to be sure of speaking unheard. Doyle played with the handle of the coffee mug. He didn't mind not being able to speak. He was trying to think what to say. Trying to make sense of what Bodie was saying. Bodie was saying … did he understand the implications?

Bodie said again, "What do you want?"

More men came in. More talk, more drinks ordered, one voice with a Scottish accent.

"A slave?" said Bodie, with the cover of the noise. "A lackey? What? I was your partner, the rest didn't matter. Now you've overturned that, and I don't know why. Are you setting me up, Ray? Bored enough to play fucking games when the birds aren't around? Is this some monstrous cruel joke? What?"

Doyle licked his lips, thinking. He leaned back a little and took a deep breath. The he leaned forward. "Love," he said.

One of the men in the room took exemption to something the first man had said. Voices raised. The proprietor again tried to make peace, but they weren't looking at him. The waitress cleared a table behind them, as if deaf to the row. Her dishes clattered together and she whistled between her teeth. It was impossible to tell what she was whistling, but it was not "The Long and Winding Road". The Beatles persisted, unwanted and unnoticed.

"What?" said Bodie, sharply?

"Love," said Doyle, watching Bodie's face closely. "Did you think of that, mate? Are you so jaded that you don't recognize love when you see it?"

Bodie said, "But --" HIs face was a study in shock.

The man in the polyester jacket hit the man in the brown leather jacket in the face.

Before a free-for-all could erupt, Bodie rose, grabbed the man closest to him, and threw him out the door. "What does it take to get a little peace in here!" he shouted at the proprietor.

The proprietor muttered, "Thanks."

The woman at the end of the bar woke up with a lurch, looked blearily at them, and put her head down again.

Bodie sat.

"Ey, friend, where' you learn a hold like that?" asked the red-nosed one with glasses.

"Fuck off," said Bodie, who didn't bother glaring at him. He was staring at Doyle.

"Love," said Doyle. "Fine as an abstract concept, but we maybe don't see a lot of it. Don't get to feel a lot of it -- the girls we like don't want violent sorts like us, the girls who want us don't fit in. Maybe we don't know how to feel it priorly any more, or how to express it. Maybe we never did."

Bodie said nothing.

"What I'm saying is … I didn't do what I did for ulterior motives. Did it because I liked the way you felt. Because I wanted to make you feel good. Because it made me … happy." He smiled wryly at the word. "Love, that's all it was."

"All? said Bodie. He still sounded angry.

Someone turned the juke-box on again. "The Long and Winding Road", which had wound to its end for several seconds, started up again. Doyle leaned forward so Bodie could hear him. "All," he said. "Love. I'm saying I love you, Bodie."

Bodie stared at him without speaking. Doyle loosened a button or two on his shirt -- it was damn warm in here now -- and leaned back on the bench.

Nothing on Bodie's face showed what he was thinking. He dropped his eyes, so the light shadowed those amazing eyelashes against those pale cheeks. He wondered why he had never thought about how Beautiful Bodie was before. Because it would have driven him mad, probably.

So the job had been a bitch and they'd both been short on sleep and high on danger and buzzed with adrenaline, caffeine and stale cheese sandwiches. They'd shot and been shot at and forced to deal with vicious scum who made their gorges rise. They'd been cold and frightened and angry and bored and no one would be paying them overtime, but --

But being on the job with Bodie was what he wanted more than anything else in the world. Here. Now. Always.

So now he'd made a fool of himself with a declaration like he'd never made to anyone, and it was true, though he hadn't though of it in those terms before, and Bodie was probably just trying to find a kind way to let him down. Or to tell him he didn't want him to touch him ever again. Or he was thinking of reporting him to Cowley for indecent behaviour on the job. Or he was going back to the SAS where men acted like men. Or he was still interested in Jilly or Patricia or Claudia or some wretched woman with too many fingernails and a Girton College accent.

Or he was trying not to laugh.

Doyle had a sudden urge to hit someone. Or something.

The Beatles, thank God, stopped singing. They were followed by Elvis Presley: _Heartbreak Hotel_.

Doyle said, "Let's go." He started to rise.

Bodie shook his head. "Not finished yet." He nodded towards his cup, as if he still wanted to drink cold sludge from the bottom of it.

One of the men in black leather started to sing along to _Heartbreak Hotel_ , very loudly. He did not sing as well as Elvis, and he was a half a beat behind.

Doyle sank back into the bench. Bodie was a right contrary bastard, so why did he love him like this? It was Romeo and Juliet, it was Lancelot and Guinevere, it was …

Laurel and Hardy, more like.

Bodie looked up. His face was stripped bare, stark, open.

He did not speak. It was clear he could not.

Doyle held out his hand, palm up. Bodie touched it, fingers to fingers. Then he gently squeezed Doyle's index finger. The faintest smile had reached his lips; his eyes. Feelings too deep to express. 

Able to breathe again, Doyle did so. It came out almost as a gasp. He blinked.

Let's get going," said Bodie.

\- - -


End file.
